Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Writers & Literary Figures

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, and wit whose works - 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' and 'De Profundis' - made him the most celebrated figure of the Aesthetic Movement. His trial and imprisonment for homosexuality transformed him from society's darling into a martyr for individual freedom.

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Oscar Wilde's Other Quotes

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Related Quotes

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

-- Leo Tolstoy

I contain multitudes.

-- Walt Whitman

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.

-- Walt Whitman

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

-- Oscar Wilde

Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

-- Born in San Francisco in 1940 and raised in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee